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Producing Your Own Vidcast for Video Sharing Part 3: Editing and Distribution

We talked about key production elements like set design, talent and crew, and equipment in part two in our April issue. This month, we'll wrap up our three-part series with editing and preparing your vidcast for the web.

Having a short catchy open that visually summarizes what your vidcast is all about is important. Since it's the first thing a new viewer will see, it has the awesome task of compelling them to continue watching. It can be as simple as cutting together a few clips from your first show or as complex as a high-energy array of shots highlighting unique aspects of your subject matter, complete with custom graphics and logo. In either case, keep it short, say five to 15 seconds, and be sure to include at least your show's title and possibly the episode number.

Unless you have chosen to use special hardware to encode and upload your vidcast live to a streaming server, then you have one of two types of editing ahead of you. The first we could call "best takes" and the other, "live from tape."

Best takes editing is probably very familiar to you; after transferring footage to your edit computer, you simply select the best takes from one or more camcorders and create a rough cut of your main or "coverage" camcorder. Next, insert second or third camera angles, tweak your in and out points, add your open, appropriate transitions, music, graphics and credits, and you have your final cut.

With two or more camcorders, you have the option of editing live from tape that resembles a live studio production. This requires a bit more preparation prior to shooting, along with software and a computer capable of handling multiple streams of video, but you get significant time savings in post. With this method, the whole vidcast, or contiguous segment, is shot as if it were live...except, if you make a mistake, you can start all over (of course, this greatly slows down the edit process and somewhat defeats the purpose of "live").

After transferring all of your footage to your edit computer, you sync each of your video streams at the beginning and roll all simultaneously. Your computer is now effectively a live switcher and you are the technical director, "cutting" from wide-angle to close-up shots on the fly. In the end, you should have a finished product, less possibly some graphics and music.

While there are not many unique aspects of editing a vidcast, several workflow habits will make your job easier when editing episodic shows. First, be sure to establish a consistent filing system. Have video assets you will reuse on each show, like your open, graphics, music, credits and any other transitional elements, all in one directory. This will greatly speed up your edit session. Next, create and stick to a consistent project naming system. There's no need to get creative here; clarity is far more important. The episode number and date work well if used like this: "2007_Ep_45_5-01" [signifying episode number 45 was shot or will upload on May 1, 2007]. This way, when you go to sort your project files in the same folder, they will be in order even across multiple years.

There are three general areas you'll need to keep in mind when preparing your video for online distribution: the media player your audience will use; the file size and quality; and, if you choose to also provide your show by RSS, the requirements of specific video aggregators like the heavyweight iTunes and others like FireAnt.

There are many media players and related file types out there, and it is no small challenge to decide which one or several will be right for your audience. But determining this is the first step. If you have a large email list of people that are likely viewers, such as a club or social group, simply send an email asking which media player they might prefer. Another informal survey would be to post the same question on a user group site dealing with your vidcast's subject matter.

Some of the currently popular media players include QuickTime/iTunes, Windows Media Player, Flash and RealPlayer. Others, such as DivX, Theora and Xvid have their followers as well. Some of these players use proprietary codecs that you will need to use to create file types that will play back correctly in a given player. Again, the most important question to answer is which media player you believe your audience will be using. Once you know the player, you will know the file type(s) you will need to prepare. If your vidcast has lots of good information that does not rely on just visuals, you may also consider adding an MP3 version to your list.

The next question you'll want to address is how big should you make your frame size and what quality settings should you use to encode? As more people are now connected with high-speed connections, larger frame sizes are becoming possible. Don't be afraid to try full-frame 720x480 at medium quality settings. This usually means video bitrates around 600-700kbps. But it is still common practice to offer multiple media player formats and in at least a high and low quality/size offering. So, pick the top two or three media players and encode with those file types. Once your show has been running for a while and you are getting some traffic, you can analyze which files types are the most popular and possibly drop the least accessed.

RSS requires doing an additional step of creating an XML file that allows aggregators to recognize and people to subscribe to your vidcast feed. An easy way to get going is to visit www.feedburner.com and follow their instructions on how to proceed.